5 ms·

OK, in the entirety of my computer usage, I never have had a need to render of unicode in all of its oddities. I would love to have a setting that just turns of

by jgeada 3y ago

OK, in the entirety of my computer usage, I never have had a need to render of unicode in all of its oddities. I would love to have a setting that just turns off all of Unicode permanently. If something arrives with unicode I'd rather it didn't render than to have all this user-hostile behavior appear. I think this one setting would significantly reduce the risk surface area of computers I use.

brmgb 3y ago
It’s going to be great the first time an European sends you a message and nothing displays because your system can’t render the diacritic in their name.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jgeada 3y ago
  I am European and my name and surnames would not render. Most English speakers can't even pronounce my name correctly, which bugs me slightly more than the name not rendering correctly in a computer. But I still don't see this as a problem. Allowing arbitrary encodings, arbitrary mix in an single text stream of right-to-left and left-to-right rendering, homonyms and visually identical rendering of different byte sequences are all a problem, and in particular when any of these are being used across a web or OS interface, where recognizing the intent is quite important.
  - brmgb 3y ago
    I agree there is an issue. I don’t agree about what the issue is. The problem is not Unicode rendering. The problem is improperly mingling information of a different nature. File extensions are not a good way to tell you if a file will be executed (Unix got that right from the start). Then executing a file involuntary shouldn’t lead to significant risks for your data and your system. That’s the actual problem which needs to be solved. Mangling text rendering is not the solution.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      It would be easy enough for web browsers and email programs to not output files with executable extensions. They make things executable for user convenience, and if the average user was on unix they'd probably do something similarly insecure there too.
skrebbel 3y ago
Yeah boo foreigners!
TacticalCoder 3y ago
> I would love to have a setting that just turns off all of Unicode permanently. That'd be way too extreme but it would have been totally possible to have a filesystem configurable so that it'd enforce ASCII only filenames and ASCII only domain names. FWIW I enforce ASCII only domain names on my system (I prevent resolving any domain name that has Unicode chars) and live is fine and well. And I'd have zero issue with ASCII-only filenames. And localization/internationalization (l10n/i18n) can go where it should: inside resource files etc.
- vladvasiliu 3y ago
  I'd argue most computer users, if considering the whole world, would like to use their native language for their file names. In some cases, you can get close enough by just cutting away random symbols. Think é -> e. Sure, you may lose some nuance, but it's close enough. I wonder how well this works for languages which don't use a latin-based script, and how approachable the conversion is for a "regular person".
  - Tainnor 3y ago
    German speakers would for sure riot if they couldn't use umlauts in file names. This discussion is so incredibly US-centric.
  - cesarb 3y ago
    > Sure, you may lose some nuance, but it's close enough. Not always. For instance, "coco" means coconut, while "cocô" (notice the circumflex, which corresponds to a change on which syllabe has the stress) means fecal matter. That's not just "some nuance".
    - jgeada 3y ago
      I think you mean cocó (Portuguese/Brazilian for shit, mostly used by little kids; adults use a different word) I love it when people are incensed on my behalf on things I actually don't care about.
Tainnor 3y ago
This is such an odd comment. You can't just "turn off" Unicode (because you can't turn off a standard). You could refuse to render any file encoded in UTF8, UTF16 etc. but that would be silly because by now, most files you're going to encounter (especially as a developer) use one of these encodings. Or you could refuse to render anything outside of the ASCII range but then you're just assuming that the English-speaking world is all there is and that people of other language communities don't also have needs (such as having their name displayed properly). That's a pretty myopic view of the world IMHO.
- ShowalkKama 3y ago
  yeah but I dont't speak their language and I don't interact with them. I never installed fonts for asian characters on my pc and it hasn't affected me whatsoever. My terminal (which is what I use to manage files) also doesn't support right to left text and it has __never__ been an issue.
  - Tainnor 3y ago
    > yeah but I dont't speak their language and I don't interact with them. Pretty sure you're interacting with lots of people on this website who aren't English native speakers. > I never installed fonts for asian characters on my pc and it hasn't affected me whatsoever. My terminal (which is what I use to manage files) also doesn't support right to left text and it has __never__ been an issue. That's not "turning off Unicode", that's just not installing fonts that deal with certain character ranges. Pretty sure whatever font you're using does support more than just bare ASCII, though.
    - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
      We're all speaking English on this website though? Look I take both of your points, but this seems like a weak argument.
      - Tainnor 3y ago
        People in this very thread have used non-ASCII characters? If people are going to mention local issues like the name of a certain politician (or even something like mathematics, with its special characters), non-ASCII characters are going to pop up. It's really not that hard to find non-ASCII comments on this website. Should such comments just not be rendered or what's your suggestion?
rocqua 3y ago
You've never had to render a name like Daniële? Never used non-breaking space on website for better text layout? Never read text that used any — em-dashes —? No currencies other than the dollar ever mentioned, and to cap it all off, never seen an emoji? I agree that unicode is ugly and stupid. But despite all that it persists, because it is the least stupid of all encodings. It's not like the ASCII characters of: Form Feed (0C), Device Control 1 through 4 (11 through 14), group separator (1D), and most other non-printable ASCII characters are a reasonable use of byte-space, or are useful to attempt to render to the screen. And that is before you get into hijinks that can be played with backspace and del characters if they are rendered naively. (Though I love backspace for progress bars in the terminal)
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  I think their main complaint is complex rendering, not merely having lots of characters. If you just go into simple mode, ë, em-dash, symbols and emoji would be fine.
zirgs 3y ago
Did you know that most emoji are implemented in Unicode?

by jgeada 3y ago

brmgb 3y ago

It’s going to be great the first time an European sends you a message and nothing displays because your system can’t render the diacritic in their name.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jgeada 3y ago
I am European and my name and surnames would not render. Most English speakers can't even pronounce my name correctly, which bugs me slightly more than the name not rendering correctly in a computer. But I still don't see this as a problem. Allowing arbitrary encodings, arbitrary mix in an single text stream of right-to-left and left-to-right rendering, homonyms and visually identical rendering of different byte sequences are all a problem, and in particular when any of these are being used across a web or OS interface, where recognizing the intent is quite important.
- brmgb 3y ago
  I agree there is an issue. I don’t agree about what the issue is. The problem is not Unicode rendering. The problem is improperly mingling information of a different nature. File extensions are not a good way to tell you if a file will be executed (Unix got that right from the start). Then executing a file involuntary shouldn’t lead to significant risks for your data and your system. That’s the actual problem which needs to be solved. Mangling text rendering is not the solution.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    It would be easy enough for web browsers and email programs to not output files with executable extensions. They make things executable for user convenience, and if the average user was on unix they'd probably do something similarly insecure there too.

skrebbel 3y ago

Yeah boo foreigners!

TacticalCoder 3y ago

> I would love to have a setting that just turns off all of Unicode permanently. That'd be way too extreme but it would have been totally possible to have a filesystem configurable so that it'd enforce ASCII only filenames and ASCII only domain names. FWIW I enforce ASCII only domain names on my system (I prevent resolving any domain name that has Unicode chars) and live is fine and well. And I'd have zero issue with ASCII-only filenames. And localization/internationalization (l10n/i18n) can go where it should: inside resource files etc.

vladvasiliu 3y ago
I'd argue most computer users, if considering the whole world, would like to use their native language for their file names. In some cases, you can get close enough by just cutting away random symbols. Think é -> e. Sure, you may lose some nuance, but it's close enough. I wonder how well this works for languages which don't use a latin-based script, and how approachable the conversion is for a "regular person".
- Tainnor 3y ago
  German speakers would for sure riot if they couldn't use umlauts in file names. This discussion is so incredibly US-centric.
- cesarb 3y ago
  > Sure, you may lose some nuance, but it's close enough. Not always. For instance, "coco" means coconut, while "cocô" (notice the circumflex, which corresponds to a change on which syllabe has the stress) means fecal matter. That's not just "some nuance".
  - jgeada 3y ago
    I think you mean cocó (Portuguese/Brazilian for shit, mostly used by little kids; adults use a different word) I love it when people are incensed on my behalf on things I actually don't care about.

Tainnor 3y ago

This is such an odd comment. You can't just "turn off" Unicode (because you can't turn off a standard). You could refuse to render any file encoded in UTF8, UTF16 etc. but that would be silly because by now, most files you're going to encounter (especially as a developer) use one of these encodings. Or you could refuse to render anything outside of the ASCII range but then you're just assuming that the English-speaking world is all there is and that people of other language communities don't also have needs (such as having their name displayed properly). That's a pretty myopic view of the world IMHO.

ShowalkKama 3y ago
yeah but I dont't speak their language and I don't interact with them. I never installed fonts for asian characters on my pc and it hasn't affected me whatsoever. My terminal (which is what I use to manage files) also doesn't support right to left text and it has __never__ been an issue.
- Tainnor 3y ago
  > yeah but I dont't speak their language and I don't interact with them. Pretty sure you're interacting with lots of people on this website who aren't English native speakers. > I never installed fonts for asian characters on my pc and it hasn't affected me whatsoever. My terminal (which is what I use to manage files) also doesn't support right to left text and it has __never__ been an issue. That's not "turning off Unicode", that's just not installing fonts that deal with certain character ranges. Pretty sure whatever font you're using does support more than just bare ASCII, though.
  - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
    We're all speaking English on this website though? Look I take both of your points, but this seems like a weak argument.
    - Tainnor 3y ago
      People in this very thread have used non-ASCII characters? If people are going to mention local issues like the name of a certain politician (or even something like mathematics, with its special characters), non-ASCII characters are going to pop up. It's really not that hard to find non-ASCII comments on this website. Should such comments just not be rendered or what's your suggestion?

rocqua 3y ago

You've never had to render a name like Daniële? Never used non-breaking space on website for better text layout? Never read text that used any — em-dashes —? No currencies other than the dollar ever mentioned, and to cap it all off, never seen an emoji? I agree that unicode is ugly and stupid. But despite all that it persists, because it is the least stupid of all encodings. It's not like the ASCII characters of: Form Feed (0C), Device Control 1 through 4 (11 through 14), group separator (1D), and most other non-printable ASCII characters are a reasonable use of byte-space, or are useful to attempt to render to the screen. And that is before you get into hijinks that can be played with backspace and del characters if they are rendered naively. (Though I love backspace for progress bars in the terminal)

Dylan16807 3y ago
I think their main complaint is complex rendering, not merely having lots of characters. If you just go into simple mode, ë, em-dash, symbols and emoji would be fine.

zirgs 3y ago

Did you know that most emoji are implemented in Unicode?